Thursday, June 12, 2008

There is something that always hits you in any city and becomes a sort of visual leitmotif. In Rome's case two recurring visual elements would have to be the endless variations of the torn posters that grab you at almost every step. I had to photograph these, even at the risk of producing Aaron Siskind me too, look alike cliches. The variations roll on in their tattered beauty and are a great way of taking the current political temperature, which in the case of Italy is often bubbling if not boiling. Then there are the pine trees, impossible to miss and a constant reminder that Rome is a southern Mediterranean city. They are tall and ragged reaching for the sky and light between the apartment blocks and down the median strips of endless avenues. And what a beautiful green against the ochre yellow earth colours of the buildings. And the smell hits you too, a waft here and there. Here are three torn posters and pine trees with a cross thrown in. A cross because they too are impossible to avoid in this ecclesiastical city.

About Me

My pictures explore the strange anthropology of cities. The unusual and overlooked in the human landscape.
I am asking the viewer to question the idea that photographs as documents are complete representations of subject.
I'm interested in the universality of life and the idea of parallel lives - when one thing is happening here, something else is happening over there. The democracy of non-places fascinates me, in the knowledge that inevitably nothing is as it seems.
I work and live between Auckland and Paris.
http://harveybenge.com/
email:harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz